Fifty Parts of “Shakspere”

The Works of Shakspere. Edited by Charles Knight. New York: Virtue & Yorston, [between 1863 and 1876].

AAS recently acquired the salesman’s dummy for this edition of Shakespeare, which was advertised “To be Completed in about Forty Parts, at Fifty Cents each, to Subscribers only.” So we had to go out and find them! Turns out there were actually fifty parts, including “Knight's biography of Shakspere, a supplement to the Works of Shakspere.” Stacked together, there is almost a foot of Shakespeare – each part issued separately in a dramatic salmony-orange wrapper.